Hi,
I’ve been using Yamaha (Tyros-based and before} for quite a few years now but with more free time available I thought I would return to profesional workstations. Unfortuneately after a few tries of different keyboards I ended up with a Roland Fantom. Unfortuneately the store only had an ex-demo XS6 without a box so I didn’t wan t to be lumbered with something which could have been played by anybody.
The Roland is a nice instrument but I still hanker for the Yamaha sounds and I’ve always liked Yamaha sequencers, the QY700 was probably the best hardware sequencer ever and I had a QX3 which was a beast. I’m very new to this forum but a cursory glance has shown some debate about the sequencer’s abilities. Is it in any way like the QY700 or indeed the sequencer on the RS7000? Does it have a step time recording facility? Does it have any sample ram on board out of the box and if not are dimms easy to acquire and to fit?
I am obviously hoping to offload the G6 at some point so does anyone know a shop in the UK where I could get a good trade in?
Being new the forum I’m not sure of I am being presumptuous but any help would be much appreciated.

Yamaholic

Re: Feedback from you guys, please.

You’ll lose a lot on such move, why don’t you get motif XS rack?
Fantom sequencer is much better IMO and more intuitive then motif’s
plus it has real audio tracks and nice live mode. This way you’ll have either great sound of motif and great sequencer in fantom.

Re: Feedback from you guys, please.

The sequencer on the XS is good in many ways.  Most notable is the dedicated pattern mode and pattern chain.  This is similar to the RS7000.  It also has the real time play fx for non destructive real time quantizing from the RS7000.  These features are missing on the Fantom.

The XS sequencer does not have a step sequencer at all and there is no drum gird or piano roll editor so editing sequences is limited and slower. 

Some of the copy functions on the XS are unintuitive and make the user figure out what part of memory to copy and paste from/to with check marks.  This choice is not obvious and makes the user think for the XS about how do do its internal processing.

You can’t edit your drum kits in context of your song like the Fantoms without a computer attached and the drum voice is more limited on the XS.

The XS has no tap tempo.

Both do not have a manual punch in from play for on the fly recording.



The Fantoms have a nice RPS feature that is good for live performance and much, much better sampling features.

The XS has great filters and effects and sounds better.

Re: Feedback from you guys, please.

Hi Delirium
Thanks for the reply but I’m afraid I’m not so much of a fan of the G6’s sequencer. You record all midi to phrases which go into a phrase list, not part of the song, so you could have 40 odd phrases kicking about your memory just for one song, the sequencers on previous Fantoms were much better. And I also don’t like the action of the new keyboard, the screen’s not bad but you have to go through dozens of button pushes to get anywhere. The whole unit seems unnecessarily complicated to obtain fairly average results and the computer connection is pretty confusing.
The Korg M3 seems good but I don’t like touchscreens or the low quality of the hardware interface. The XS could have everything I want if the sequencer was ok, sampling not that important since I never had it on the PSR keyboards I owned.
Thanks for your advice I appreciate your time.

Yamaholic

Re: Feedback from you guys, please.

I agree about the Fantom G’s new phrase/part based sequencer.  It’s a total mess.  They went backwards with this one.  I hope Yamaha don’t follow this design on the next motif.  One thing I do like is how the internal and external/ARX parts have their own mixer pages.  The MV has a nice sequencer though.

Re: Feedback from you guys, please.

Yamaholic, so I don’t get it why did you buy fantom in first place ???
Get yourself XS then and cut your losses. BTW M3 is great too, I’m close to buy a module myself.

Re: Feedback from you guys, please.

Hi Yamaholic,

Welcome to the forum. The main issue you’re always going to face with a ‘feedback’ question is that if you ask 100 users what they think about any given product - you’ll get 100 different answers, many of which will have no relevance whatsoever to what your needs and expectations are.

Sure, it’s a fact that the XS sequencer isn’t perfect for everyone - but neither are the sequencers on competing products, either, and it’s a matter of carefully assessing your own needs and ultimately go for the product which, to you, represents the least compromised solution. But - there are always ways of ‘thinking outside the box’ and being a little creative with your budget and hardware choices to make those compromises less of a burden.

For me - step sequencing was a must-have, since I’m principally a guitar player with limited keyboard skills, and of course the XS doesn’t have this feature. But the way the XS sounds, man !!! Nothing for me came close - not even slightly, so the XS it just had to be. My personal route round the lack of step sequencing was to go on ebay and find a 25-year-old Roland MSQ-700 for £50. FIFTY QUID !! It may be old, but it’s still the most user-friendly and intuitive scratchpad ever built. I use this just to create small, basic MIDI patterns and then fire them onto an XS track for further development and editing. It works brilliantly. I wonder how much QX3’s go for on ebay?

You see my point?

Anyway, just to cover your other points;

1 There’s no sample RAM onboard, but a gB’s worth of DIMMs are as cheap as chips and are a 5-minute install achieved by unscrewing a small plate on the synth’s base and just plugging them in.

2 Offloading your Fantom is best done privately (ebay?) as you’ll always get the best price for it - a dealer or music store will have to add VAT and make a profit on it when he re-sells, all of that comes out of your pocket.

All I can say in conclusion is that any situation like this is only gonna be a problem if you have that negative mindset to allow it to become one. I LOVE my XS, I LOVE the sequencer, I LOVE the sounds. So do lots of other guys here. Go buy one !!

Best wishes

Re: Feedback from you guys, please.

What he said.  There is no workstation with a perfect sequencer. You would have to pair it with an MPC to have the best hardware sequencer plus sounds.

The other advantages to the XS pattern mode is the way each phrase the track plays has its own bar length.  Each track will automatically loop its phrase up to the length of the pattern section. 

The patch screen lets you patch a phrase to any section or track.

The dedicated A-P section buttons on the front panel for patterns allow you to change sections on the fly or quantized to the next bar.  This lets you experiment with your sections like intro to chorus to bridge etc. on the fly.  This can also be recorded in real time to a linear pattern chain along with track mutes.

There are also dedicated track select and track mute/solo buttons.

Re: Feedback from you guys, please.

and eject button…

Re: Feedback from you guys, please.

Well, the Fantom X has a really wonderful sequencer. Its very much similar to the MV series.

Re: Feedback from you guys, please.

welllllll............ Cubase\Nuendo\Logic\Sonar\ProTools\Ableton\@$*… sequencers are way superior then any hardware sequencer i have ever workd with and they are much cheaper… i’m sure Del has something to say about it/forums/images/icons/smile.gif alt=

Re: Feedback from you guys, please.

>>>Cubase\Nuendo\Logic\Sonar\ProTools\Ableton\@$*

yeah, they all suck… /forums/images/icons/wink.gif alt=

Re: Feedback from you guys, please.

Wow, I’m quite overwhelmed! I was on another product forum site(not Roland) recently and after asking a significant question on the synth’s operation I only got one reply which didn’t answer the question and two other people were asking basically the same question with the same lack of response. I’ve only been on this forum about 5 hours and already I’ve got lots of well balanced useful feedback, thanks to all of you.
I’m not keen on computer DAWs, I tried Cubasis and demoed Logic but did’t feel comfortable with them. A workstation sequencer can be a good partnership where you are using the same diplay for everything and you get used to where all the controls are. If I can edit velocity, gate time and quantize, change time signatures and tempo then the idiocyncracies of the OS can probably be overcome.
Anyway I do thank you all for taking the time to give me your feedback and I’m now confident that when I do manage to get an XS I will have no trouble getting any problems solved

Yamaholic